Sometimes you just want to massage that audio, knead it like dough, and stretch it out just a little bit.  We all know that the TCE trim tool can let you shorten or lengthen a region’s duration without changing pitch, but it renders a new file each time you use it.  If you change your mind on the change, you have to un-do it and re-do it differently (if you kept stretching the file over and over without undoing, you’d destroy the sonic fidelity very quickly).  If it’s a long region, you’ll be left waiting a while before that finishes.  And if you need to change duration a few different times within a region, you have no choice but to split it up first.

Elastic Audio, a handy feature of Pro Tools that is typically targeted at musicians, actually addresses many issues quite well for post.  Is sync a little off for that ADR?  Use Elastic Audio.  Do you need to stretch out a few chopped up words in that reality show Franken-Bite to make it sound at least a little more natural?  Use Elastic Audio.  Did they manage to record the set audio for that shot without reference, so it’s drifting?  Use Elastic Audio!  Is someone cut off mid-sentence, and you just want to make that last word a little longer so it feels a bit more natural?  Use Elastic Audio already! Read the rest of this entry »